Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere

Saturday 14th November 2020

This afternoon we got chatting with a couple called James and Amanda on a sailboat anchored close by. They too are heading south and like us their plans are in turmoil because of Covid. After the conversation I thought about the Talking Heads track “Road to Nowhere” and realized that it fits our current situation perfectly. (fyi Talking Heads are one of my favorite bands of all time). As time goes by it seems increasingly unlikely that we will be heading down to the Caribbean this winter or even over to the Bahamas. So we are making a deliberate effort to change our approach. Rather than rushing to get down to Florida we are now trying to slow down and focus on enjoying where we are. This is a bit of a challenge for me as I’m always in a rush, thinking ahead and planning the next step, but I think this will be a good experience for us. 

There are some practical advantages to a more leisurely pace and in particular, we can do shorter journeys on any given day and schedule them to make use of high tides to avoid issues with shallow sections in the ICW. Today we got up at 5am and left an hour later in the dark. Yes, I know that doesn’t sound very leisurely, but it allowed us to cross the Lockwood’s Folly inlet and Shallotte River inlet at close to high tide with an extra 5-6 feet of water under our keel. Both of these areas are notorious for shoaling and vessels running aground. Once past these obstacles we carried on for a few more miles and then turned into the Calabash Creek and anchored. The entrance to the creek has a sandbar that is reported to be close to 5 ft depth with extreme low tide, but we came in at mid-tide and never saw less than 9 feet. By 10 am we were anchored safely in the creek with the rest of the day ahead of us. 

It’s beautiful here with fast flowing muddy water, marshes and wooded skylines. We saw so many birds today, literally dozens of kingfishers, blue herons, tricolor herons, pelicans, egrets and ibis to name a few. Shortly after anchoring a bald eagle flew right over the boat and landed in the trees close by. We heard it calling to its mate and then spotted the partner close by. It was quite magical. We took a brief dinghy trip up to the town of Calabash about a mile away. It’s a small, touristy town with many restaurants overlooking the creek. There is an active fishing / shrimping fleet as well as several charter boats primarily for fishing trips. It was fun to walk around and we bought some shrimp on the dock that we plan to eat this evening. 

We could have gone further today and made it to the Waccamaw River but then we wouldn’t have experienced Calabash. Also we would have had to tackle another challenging area called the “Rockpile” at low tide. By stopping here until tomorrow we get to go through that 4-mile section at high tide. We’ll see how it goes in the morning!

p.s. The army corp of engineers publish their latest hydrograph survey data for some of the areas that tend to be prone to shoaling. Here is the link to the Calabash Creek map which might give you some idea of the challenges we are dealing with.

https://www.sac.usace.army.mil/Portals/43/docs/navigation/hm/IC_02_CBC_20200113_CS.pdf?ver=2020-01-21-154425-303

Mike

33 52.352 N, 78 34.196 W

Cotinga anchored in Calabash Creek .... 8-14 ft depth here, up to 2 knots current

This is where we bought our fresh shrimp in Calabash

Juvenile laughing gull

It's unfortunately quite common to see wrecked boats in this part of the USA as a consequence of the tropical storms / hurricanes that come through on a regular basis. This boat is one of three washed up in the anchorage in calabash Creek

This is a shrimp boat that stopped right next to the anchorage to sort out the nets and gear. Although well lit it was a trial for my photo equipment. The tripod holds teh camera steady but doesn't stop the boats moving so this was shot at ISO 3200, F2.8, 1/10 sec

Abstract shot with lens rotated part-way through a longer exposure